varlet

English

Etymology

From Old French varlet. Compare valet.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈvɑːlət/

Noun

varlet (plural varlets)

1. (obsolete) A servant or attendant.
   • 1840, [James Fenimore Cooper], chapter I, in Mercedes of Castile: Or, The Voyage to Cathay. , volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 19:

     The varlet, or follower of the merchant, who was still a youth, though his vigorous frame and embrowned cheek denoted equally severe exercise and rude exposure, started and reddened at this free inquiry, which was enforced by a hand slapped familiarly on his knee, and such a squeeze of the leg as denoted the freedom of the camp.

   • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 8, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):

     The Winchester Manorhouse has fled bodily, like a Dream of the old Night […] . House and people, royal and episcopal, lords and varlets, where are they?

2. (historical) Specifically, a youth acting as a knight's attendant at the beginning of his training for knighthood.
   • 1891, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, The White Company, New York, N.Y., Boston, Mass.: Thomas Y Crowell & Company , →OCLC, page 138:

     [T]here was a little, sleek, fat clerk of the name of Chaucer, who was so apt at rondel, sirvente, or tonson, that no man dare give back a foot from the walls, lest he find it all set down in his rhymes and sung by every underling and varlet in the camp.

3. (archaic) A rogue or scoundrel.
   • 1574, Augustine Marlorate [i.e., Augustin Marlorat], “[Revelation 2:2]”, in Arthur Golding, transl., A Catholike Exposition vpon the Reuelation of Sainct Iohn. , London: H Binneman, for L Harison, and G Bishop, →OCLC, folio 32, recto:

     [W]hen the worlde is fraughted with ſo manye varlettes, that it will be a long time ere a man ſhall diſcerne the faythful from the Hipocrites.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A Millar, , →OCLC:

     My lady to be called a nasty Scotch wh–re by such a varlet!—To be sure I wish I had knocked his brains out with the punchbowl.

   • 1885–1886, Henry James, chapter VIII, in The Bostonians , London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 16 February 1886, →OCLC, 1st book, pages 57–58:

     He was false, cunning, vulgar, ignoble; the cheapest kind of human product […] The white, puffy mother, with the high forehead, in the corner there, looked more like a lady; but if she were one, it was all the more shame to her to have mated with such a varlet, Ransom said to himself, making use, as he did generally, of terms of opprobrium extracted from the older English literature.

4. (obsolete, card games) The jack.

Translations

Anagrams

• retval, travel

Old French

Noun

varlet oblique singular, m (oblique plural varlez or varletz, nominative singular varlez or varletz, nominative plural varlet)

1. Alternative form of vaslet